Visceral
by Princess Twilite
Summary: “There is a stubble mark just beneath her mouth, and she shivers, remembers the ferocity of his kiss, like she was a well to drink from and his mouth was so dry--” Luke/Lorelai. Complete.


Title: Visceral 1/1  
  
Author: Princess Twilite (Princesstwilite2@aol.com)  
  
Rating: R, for non-graphic sexual situations  
  
Summary: "There is a stubble mark just beneath her mouth, and she shivers, remembers the ferocity of his kiss, like she was a well to drink from and his mouth was so dry--"  
  
Disclaimer: Luke and Lorelai are not mine.  
  
Distribution: Anywhere, just let me know that you have it.  
  
Dedication: For Green Eve, who totally blows me away with her talent.  
  
Pairing: Lorelai/Luke  
  
Spoilers: Post Season Two.  
  
Genre: Romance, Angst, Story, Character Exploration  
  
POV: Lorelai, third, present tense.  
  
Website: http://shippersunited.com/whip  
  
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ptupdates  
  
A/N: A bit of fluff, I suppose. It's heavy on the character exploration, without the conversation. Thanks to Sarah who keeps pushing and pushing for more GG out of me. And thanks to all the loyal feedbackers in general. YOU guys are all I need to keep the muse alive.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Loud, like the crystal on marble sound of breaking, her heart shifts in her chest. It is a twist that burns her, makes the tears multiply and shake mercilessly behind the skin of her eye lids, squeezing so tight shut that she worries she'll never see again. In her stomach, grief and fear is recognized, welcomed back like an old friend so often held away, pushed away, shoved away.  
  
Lorelai breathes out, and the breath is as hot as the skin between her legs, flushed and heavy. More, her atoms seem to say. We want more. Each separate movement of him sleeping beside her jars her belly and makes her wonder what thoughts went through his head in that moment between awake and sleeping.  
  
Falling in love must be like this, she realizes, opening her eyes to see the ceiling looming above, damp with early hours and their sweat.  
  
She wonders how hot the room has to be to catch on fire all by itself.  
  
She wonders if that is even possible.  
  
It is her own bedroom, but she feels like she should gather up her clothes and tip toe shoeless out the door. Something about that irritates her and she feels like shoving the arm that rests possessively across her ribcage off and making him tumble to the floor. That would show him. It would!  
  
Tick, something goes inside her, tick.  
  
Lorelai only turns her head and presses her cheek to his, where his face rests buried in her pillow, centimeters from her. The scrape of his stubble burns, like sandpaper across a pear, but she just presses her cheek against him harder, feels him.  
  
God, she aches now, and hates him for this more than anything.  
  
To ache, to want, this feeling is so new and incomprehensible in its intensity.  
  
She thinks to call Rory, so far away in Washington D.C. but he is too near and her heart is beating too fast in her chest at the thought of spilling out all these worries with him just inches away.  
  
The room is silver with dawn, like an hourglass caught at an angle, light glinting through but just barely. And she cranes her neck to peek up over his face, toward the window where the sky turns marginally lighter, like the step-down from cigarettes, one minute at a time.  
  
She smoked when she was younger, until she realized it made kissing her the equivalent of licking an ash tray and really, it turned even movie stars ugly.  
  
Lorelai looks back at Luke, down into his raw mouth, red from her kisses and is glad that he doesn't smoke. His lips taste so sweet just by themselves and it really would be an addiction worthy of the Surgeon General's warning, but she doubts Luke's been kissing the Surgeon General any time recently.  
  
She feels a pang of jealousy at the thought of Luke kissing anyone even though he was kissing her the night before. It clicks in her chest, stubborn and green right next to her heart. She wants to smack him so suddenly that she huffs out a breath and jerks from beneath his arm, sliding down onto the floor with her naked skin bumping up all over the place from the chill.  
  
He grunts something, but remains mostly undisturbed.  
  
Asshole.  
  
Lorelai flicks her hair at him, and walks to the bathroom with that weight of her own self-imposed anger dripping further into her belly like the slow sands of time had grown impatient.  
  
The floor creaks.  
  
The door creaks.  
  
Her heart flaps open, and creaks.  
  
She pauses, so aware of her naked back that her stomach is tight with the embarrassment of being caught, sneaking away. She glances back at him, where he is a shape in the gray, a big body draped over her bed where there is often no one but her. He is muscular and strong and a little heavy around the middle, and his thighs have small hairs on them that tickle her calves.  
  
He remains asleep and somehow this comforts her.  
  
She closes the door softly behind her, pushing it gently into the jamb and listening for the click. It doesn't come, but that's okay, because she still has one going off inside of her.  
  
Click. Click. Click.  
  
Or maybe it is more of a tick.  
  
She doesn't like to tick, that resembles waiting far too much and she's only waited for one thing in her life. It wasn't her parents, it certainly wasn't Christopher, it was the nine months of carrying Rory around in her stomach, and feeling the life grow, like a seed into a tree, in the deep places inside herself.  
  
It is dark in the bathroom, so thick with black she could reach out and touch it with her fingertips. Lorelai flicks on the light and everything burns white as brightness floods the bathroom.  
  
She reaches for her toothbrush and catches her own eyes in the mirror. They are deep and heavy with sleep, satiated by sex, and her skin is flushed and red. There is a stubble mark just beneath her mouth, and she shivers, remembers the ferocity of his kiss, like she was a well to drink from and his mouth was so dry---  
  
She should look different, Lorelai thinks. But she only looks scared.  
  
Shaking her head, Lorelai tears away from her reflection, turns on the faucet and lets the water run over her toothbrush. Her mouth tastes heavy and not so well-like. She doubts he would like the taste of it now. The toothpaste cap is on tight, and she nearly breaks her nail trying to open it, but open it she does, and she cannot for the life of her understand why she so badly wants to cry and why she so badly wants to finish up in the bathroom and crawl back into that warm space he's made for her in the crook of his elbow and the wedge of his thighs.  
  
So warm. So strangely comforting, though she has certainly never begged comfort from ANY man.  
  
Maybe it is the fluorescent lighting, she thinks to herself as she scrubs her teeth roughly with the bristles of the toothbrush. It is so loud and eye-popping that she feels like a circus-clown beneath it.  
  
Circus clowns do not have sex with Luke and she wants to.  
  
She has.  
  
Another shiver goes off, deeper inside, like virgin territory has been tracked and marked and Luke is standing on it looking silly in combat gear, waving a flag around with a burger on it.  
  
Lorelai blinks and the image is gone.  
  
She spits into the sink, and her spit is blue and clumpy from the paste. She wonders what to do about the toothbrush situation. Luke didn't bring one and will certainly want to use one when he wakes up.  
  
But this is HER toothbrush. and she never lets anyone use it, not even Rory.  
  
Maybe it is time to make space for another one?  
  
The thought jars her and she nearly knocks over a half-open tube of eyeliner as she grips the edge of the sink to steady herself. But her arms feel weak and she wants to fall down so she forces herself to stand up straight, without any help.  
  
A small, quiet voice in the back of her head: Take that, mother.  
  
Lorelai rinses out the sink with warm water and brings a washcloth beneath the stream, wetting the cloth and then bringing it to her face, swiping at the burning skin of her cheeks.  
  
Why is she so hot, when she can feel the draft of cool air swirling around her thighs and the cold porcelain of the sink pressing into her stomach?  
  
She slams her palm against the light switch and doesn't have to look herself in the eye as she walks away from the sink, away from the mirror, doesn't have to admit it to herself quite yet.  
  
Denial is like this, she realizes. Like the slide of whiskey down your throat, leaving a burning trail that leads right back to the lips of the bottle you'd been kissing. It is a bread crumb trail to the truth.  
  
The door does click this time, and she winces, squeezing through the small opening she makes herself. The room is lighter; a flare of blue peeking through her nearly closed curtains. She sees a tree branch sway, the leafs rustling soundly against each other, foretelling of next week when she will sit here with Luke, and do nothing but hold his hand.  
  
She stops at the bottom of the bed, where his toes dig into the mattress. He has rolled toward the middle of the bed, splayed belly-first across the tangled sheets. The mattress itself peeks out from beneath the fabric, victorious, self-assured. She thinks Luke was like that last night, when he first slid inside of her, like he knew just was he was doing and just how she liked it.  
  
His back is bare, shoulder blades standing out sharply as his arms curl up beneath the pillow. He nearly glows with the coming light and she can taste the toothpaste in her mouth heating.  
  
Last night, he came to her.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Someone knocked on the door at eleven o' one even, and she wasn't sleeping, was in fact watching and old movie on Tuner Classic Movies, but was angry anyway. The robe swayed around her legs as she made short, choppy movements to the door.  
  
She was surprised to see that it was him, standing there like so much bad weather with an angry grimace on his face.  
  
"Luke?" Lorelai stood with her face scrunched up and her hand gripping so hard on the doorknob she thought she might break it.  
  
He hates me, she thinks. He hates me.  
  
"I think we need to talk," he says gruffly, and she tells him that she has no clue what he could possibly want to say. But she does, she really does because she's wanted to say it too. So many times, like the time she was wearing clouds and the counter was right in front of him and there he had been, his lips just an inch away.  
  
Luke gets a strange look on his face, like he wants to argue, but seems to decide it's easier to just use physical force. He pushes past her, shoulder bumping into hers. Lorelai nearly falls over at the contact, after so many days and weeks and hours of that shoulder being cold.  
  
By now, she had thought it was turned to ice instead of the warm press of flesh that it was when it banged against hers.  
  
She turns to find him standing large and out of place just behind her, with the house framing him like some picture she knew she'd keep in her mind for quite a while.  
  
"I have a lot to say even if you don't," he tells her and she feels guilty, like she's taken something from him that she can't give back or replace. She has an urge to go shopping, to feel the mall floor beneath her feet and have the people mill about her with their loud voices and plastic credit cards in hand. Lorelai shakes this thought away, doubting she could buy back the happiness she had once seen in Luke's eyes. "And you're going to listen even if I have to tie you up and gag you."  
  
Lorelai raises an eyebrow, just this and nothing more.  
  
"I want to stop hating you," he tells her. "It's hard on my stomach and my doctor tells me that I have an ulcer now."  
  
"You want to stop hating me?" Lorelai asks incredulously, like he's told her that he's decided to join a circus and wear a tutu. She knows her face must be a mask of shock like he's never seen before, but she has it in her head now that he would never-ever stop hating her again.  
  
She has come to accept this.  
  
She has come to depend on this.  
  
Lorelai wasn't so sure how she felt about him making a move to stop hating her. She had figured that if the time ever came, though it probably wouldn't, that she would be making the first move. Maybe she was becoming less perceptive because now she remembers him passing her on the street today and not having his eyes pass through her like twin-ghosts. In fact, if she thinks about it closely enough, he had even looked directly into her eyes for just a haunt of a second.  
  
"I want to stop hating you," he says again, and his lips are twisting over the words, his face so weary she hurts for their lost friendship again.  
  
She can blame him for this, Lorelai thinks. She can close up like a clam because he's making her hurt and it IS his fault. "I want to stop being carefully polite and seeing you walk by me like you're afraid I'm going to lash out and bite you," is what he says next and she wants to cover her ears or his mouth.  
  
She does cover his mouth and he breaks off, his voice falling silent like the dull echo of a blade fading from the forest. His skin is very tan against her pale hand, and her own nails glint at her. Luke's breath rushes out in a warm puff across her fingers that tickle her skin. Her heart starts pounding low in her stomach at the black, hot look in his eyes.  
  
Luke has looked at her many times, but never like this.  
  
His lips press against her palm gently and it feels like her lifeline has caught on fire. A gasp breaks off like a chunk of ice from her lips and she feels something like winter melting inside of her. It is gentle pressure, but insistent as he brings his hand up and circles his fingers around her wrist, firm but gentle.  
  
His lips move against her skin again, his bottom lip flattened near the edge of her palm, where her hand turns into her arm. She thinks she is going crazy. She thinks she must be asleep, dreaming again and wouldn't this be interesting to tell Rory --- this must be because of Christopher; she can blame it on the absentee father somehow.  
  
She thinks she's going to die or fall because her knees are shaking and he's just touched the center of her palm with the tip of his tongue and closed his eyes like he is savoring it. "It's been so long since you've touched me," he growls into her fingers and she cups the words, but he's the one that captures her, tugging her forward with that manacle he has on her and wrapping a long arm around her waist until they are nose to nose and she can feel his heart pounding.  
  
It echoes, low --- so low, and she knows what that is pressed into her hip.  
  
"I've never touched you," she reminds him as he pulls her tighter against him, a hand sliding up her back to grip the nape of her neck beneath the heavy curtain of her hair. His breath is on her cheek, warm and he has released her palm and somehow made it so she is holding him, palms holding onto his hair and shoulder.  
  
She wonders why she is holding on so tightly instead of letting him go, or more, pushing him away.  
  
She should push him away.  
  
"You have," Luke argues and she can't see his lips anymore because he's so close. She can feel them moving though, as he speaks, they brush against her cheek and make her ears tingle. His eyes are big, all that she can see, and she thinks that there is too much in them to be said aloud.  
  
She hopes he doesn't try, because then she'd have to accept the way she was already burning, itching, and aching. "You've touched me," he continues, kissing her cheek and then the edge of her lips, resting there on the corner like he's waiting for a red light to change green. "All the time, you touch me. Every time I hear your name, you touch me. Every time I've seen you cry, you touch me. Every time I smell the scent of coffee, you touch me."  
  
Lorelai closes her eyes, feels the words settle deep.  
  
Somehow, some way and she's not completely sure of this, but she twists her head to the side and catches his moving lips with her own. He stills, like a hunter caught with his own gun, and then suddenly bursts into action, squeezing the back of her neck tighter, pulling her body against his so the kiss is more than a kiss, it is a prelude.  
  
Their lips stay closed for a long while, but they move, bite, twist, and pant.  
  
When a tongue comes out, it is hers because she finds herself very hungry for the taste of him. His body tenses, and she feels a shudder ripple across his stomach as he opens his mouth up to her on a hot, wet breath that stings a cut beneath her nose.  
  
Her tongue slides over his lips, slips just inside far enough to glide over the slick, sex-like skin of his cheek and she is licking at his lips again. He makes a little sound in the back of his throat and drags his hand from her neck up to her hair, gripping the back of her head and forcing her to kiss him deeper, tugging her mouth open with his teeth when she closes it.  
  
This game is familiar.  
  
Run. Chase.  
  
They are about to add another level to their routine: being caught.  
  
His teeth clink against hers, like a glass set on the porcelain sink after a long, cool drink and his tongue pushes into her mouth, a strong, small muscle that she sucks on while he drags his fingers through her curls. His other hand is busy rubbing little circles into her hip like he's trying to soothe her because he's afraid she'll bolt like a deer in the sight of the barrel of a gun.  
  
His hair is soft beneath her fingertips and she curls it around her nails, tugging his head to the side to take the kiss that much deeper. He gives a little groan when she plays her tongue along the line of his teeth and sighs into her mouth.  
  
He tastes like. turkey.  
  
She finds it odd, but not unpleasant and just keeps on kissing him, nudging his nose with her own, forming her mouth onto his and changing the shape.  
  
Around her the world is becoming something different and he's the only thing holding still so she tugs on his shoulder and he must be thinking further ahead because his hands go down around the back of her thighs and lift her into the air.  
  
She gives a little squeak and tears her mouth from his while gripping on tightly to his waist with her thighs. Lorelai fears irrationally that she's going to fall and keep falling because she can't see the floor and that must mean it isn't there.  
  
He is breathing hard, in jagged riffs from deep in his chest and looking at her with glitter in his eyes.  
  
"Lorelai --" he doesn't finish what he wants to say, shakes his head instead and reaches up to plant a gentle, loving kiss on her forehead.  
  
He doesn't hate me, she thinks. He doesn't hate me.  
  
It is what he doesn't say that counts.  
  
'I want you, Lorelai.'  
  
She should say no, she knows this. She should hop off him and stop running her fingers through his hair. She shouldn't even be considering slipping her hands down the back of his pants and getting a nice, long feel of the muscles that have been disturbing her dreams for so long.  
  
Lorelai doesn't say no.  
  
She kisses him, just below his chin, has to duck her head down uncomfortably to do so and feels a pain seize in her neck. But Luke hums in the back of his throat and grips her more roughly, pulsing against her, so she keeps doing it until he gives a half-groan and pulls her lips off of him, kissing her mouth urgently.  
  
She opens for him immediately, like a flower that only blossoms at night.  
  
Dark, sweet, she feels so wet she thinks she could slip right through the cracks if he wasn't holding her. She might want to if he ever decides to stop.  
  
She wants more, now. Lorelai realizes that she's going to have sex with Luke and is surprised with herself when the discovery doesn't shock her.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Lorelai shakes herself out of the memory, finds herself in room that has the sun shining in through the window like an intruding house guest and Luke on his back, staring at her through hazy, half-asleep eyes.  
  
She flushes, all over. And naked as she is, she knows he can see the blush swimming across her skin like a quick moving stream.  
  
Falling into trances can lead to embarrassing situations.  
  
"So it does go everywhere," he teases in a morning-rusty voice that is half desire. She is naked before him and he is erect, waiting for her to make a move. She stares at him, unnerved by how much SPACE he takes up.  
  
Her stomach jumps.  
  
Luke smiles slowly, a quiet grin that stretches across his face as he pats the sheet beside him, lifting his knees until his feet are flat on the bed and his legs are splayed wantonly. "What are you doing all the way over there?" He asks softly, and his voice moves like fingers of vibration up her legs.  
  
Her toes curl into the carpet.  
  
And there is happiness in his eyes, she realizes. The kind she's never been able to buy, even when she was younger and had her parents' money.  
  
"I don't know," she answers, surprised by the sound of her own voice when she hasn't spoken for so long. It is hoarse, abraded, and she knows he can hear how much she wants him, literally aches like a lost thing for the touch of him.  
  
He stares at her for a moment, his face serious as his smile falls off millimeter by millimeter until it is gone and he looks only tired and aging. Then he pats the bed again, impatiently.  
  
"Come back to bed," he demands, in that Luke-way of his and she thinks he's gotten awfully comfy where he is. It's irritating for him to be so presumptuous.  
  
Sex is sex. Right?  
  
She goes over to him, stands next to him where he lays and he stretches, the sheet moving over his belly and pelvis, jutting the cloth out. Then he looks up at her, eyes heavy-lidded. His neck is bent at an odd angle, but he doesn't seem to mind. She stands there for a long time, wondering what she can say.  
  
They don't have a friendship to ruin, not anymore.  
  
She wants a friendship with him, but now she wants this too.  
  
Lorelai nods and he raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. She smiles, half- shaking, and reaches a hand out to palm his stubble-roughened cheek. He startles as though surprised and his skin flinches beneath her touch, and then goes very quiet and still.  
  
He watches her watch him.  
  
"What?" Luke whispers, eyes jerking from her mouth to her gaze, and back again. His tongue darts out, wets his lips and she is hungry again.  
  
She wants to say: I love you.  
  
She wants to say: How could you do this to us?  
  
Then again, she did it too. And she wants to do it again.  
  
"I just--" She raises her other hand in the air, palm toward the ceiling. That's his answer and he bites his bottom lip, breathes deeply as she trails her fingers up his cheek and over his eyebrows. His eyelashes flutter, like he wants to close the lids and just FEEL her.  
  
She wonders how long he's been waiting, because the look on his face, string-tight, says that it's been a while for him. She hates herself just then, because she always does when she manages to hurt him and it has nothing to do with coffee.  
  
"Come back to bed," he says again, voice just a dry rasp as he grips her about the waist and tugs her down onto him. Her breasts press against his chest, bare skin to bare skin and they both give a little gasp, a jerk of breath through the lungs that they can share through a kiss.  
  
It goes more quickly than it did the night before.  
  
Last night, they took it slow, thrusting hard and deep and long.  
  
This morning, with the tree brushing against the window and the wind picking up to hop against the house and shake the walls, he tumbles her onto her back, still kissing her mouth like she's something sweet to eat. She's glad for the toothpaste, and his mouth doesn't taste all that bad.  
  
Turkey was the taste still, how strange.  
  
Lorelai arches up against him, feeling his thighs weave between hers and him drag the sheet up over them to keep out the blinding sunlight. She can barely breathe with the cloth covering them, but she can feel his lips dragging wet, hot trails across her shoulder and it's okay.  
  
The room is shadows through the white sheet, standing out sharply with spots of light. She blinks lazily, drawn out by the feel of him moaning into her ear as he pushes himself inside of her.  
  
It goes quickly, but it goes sweeter, less angry and desperate than last time when they forced each other to feel IT. Want IT.  
  
It was---  
  
This is morning, in all the bad-breath, what-did-I-do glory and she feels her heart flapping open again, like a blanket hung out on the line, trapped in the crazy breeze.  
  
"Lorelai," he grunts into her hair, "Lorelai."  
  
A drop of sweat lands between her breasts and she closes her eyes, stretches up around him and holds him.  
  
She doesn't want to let go. She doesn't!  
  
His face is arousal-blunted and she can picture it in her mind's eye, tan and lined from frowns and secret, half smiles. His lips are pulled back against his teeth and they are pearly white, hard and primordial. His eyes, oh they stay open, on her all the time, watching what he does to her.  
  
Luke's victory beats out, bass drum strong against her collarbone where his heart rests and inside of her, where he pulses, alive.  
  
And then it is over, and her body is humming with the newness and pleasure of it. Sweat slicks her hair back into a mess that he combs his fingers through, cradling her skull like she's something precious. He places gentle, unhurried kisses all over her face and she giggles.  
  
It erupts from her, like a volcano spitting marshmallows and he grins down, his eyes crinkled charmingly with time and memories.  
  
"I never hated you," Luke confides to her in a stage whisper, dragging his nose along hers in an Eskimo-kiss.  
  
Who would have though Luke could be so tender? Well, she had, but it was an entirely different matter to admit it.  
  
She slicks her hands up over his shoulders and oddly, can't wait to talk to Rory because WOW. He keeps the sheet over them, even though sweat and heat swims through their trapped air. Luke hunches over her grinning and she can't NOT want him there with her. No matter how much space he takes up and no matter what they do about the toothbrush matter.  
  
"I never hated you either," she says and it IS a confession because his eyes light up and he's kissing her again.  
  
Lorelai goes as slick as melted-butter all over, so relaxed she could melt into a puddle and slide off the bed.  
  
Her heart beats with this pleasant new ache that she can't quite account for and isn't sure she's ready for. It's there. The twisting and burning continue, but it seems dulled when he is rubbing his toes along her calve muscle, like he is a balm for a sore wound.  
  
Christopher who?  
  
Lorelai laughs against his mouth, still scared, but so what? Later, Luke would ask her what was so funny but right then they were much too busy. And she knows that if he listens close enough, he will hear the tick-tick-tick of her heart in her chest, doing a little bit of waiting of her own. Whether she wants to or not.  
  
She feels raw from this morning's discovery, like an orange peeled, open and vulnerable. But he is being so gentle that it only makes sensation that much more powerful. Lorelai thinks of all the things she's never waited for, and how maybe it's time. Maybe she was kick-started into love so quickly she didn't even realize it and is just now catching up.  
  
MAYBE she can accept it and not run away without a plan to be caught.  
  
Because Luke has been waiting for her.  
  
And this time, the waiting is for him.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
  
  
The End 1/1  
  
I am a feedback whore. 


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